


Welcome to the rest of your life, King

by femaletodd



Series: Welcome to the rest of your life, King [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 04:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9531446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femaletodd/pseuds/femaletodd
Summary: He knows deep in his heart that something about him has come out all wrong. He notices the ache of it missing. He knows not what it is. It isn't hunger, though he has less of it now. He feels the cold less too. Everything he feels a little less. Like the world around him has dimmed in color. Like grey film covers where his eyes are.The only time he felt human--It was all her. Her bold blue eyes that demanded. Demanded he rise again. Demanded he cut out his heart and hand it to her. And he did.He did.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a small one-shot sorta thing.

The dreams. When he was alive, before he died, the dreams had been either horrible or good for once or extremely weird. When he closes his eyes after he died for the first time, he thinks he will only dream odd or horrible dreams for a long time.

But the dreams don't come.

Only a stifling, harrowing darkness sits before him, with its claws at the ready. Its visage stays hidden under a hooded shroud made of black fabric and it waits for him. Steady before the chaotic time and space before it. Sure that he would fall once again and be back in its clutches like he was supposed to the first time.

He tries not to sleep after that.

Some days, exhaustion does him in. Sometimes, he can't bear his fears and has to force himself to face it.

He knows deep in his heart that something about him has come out all wrong. He notices the ache of it missing. He knows not what it is. It isn't hunger, though he has less of it now. He feels the cold less too. Everything he feels a little less. Like the world around him has dimmed in color. Like grey film covers where his eyes are.

He thinks about it more often than he sleeps. The moment steel pierced his skin and twisted into his chest cage, spurting out blood. He thinks about the moment he stared into his men’s eyes as one-by-one, they came forward and struck him with the words “For the watch” on their lips. It still stung something awful to think on it.

After, it was like a curtain of darkness had come and sapped him of all his energy. All the strength that he had to muster up to fight the battles that mattered-- all of it had left him.

He was standing there, not knowing what to do, confused and weary, staring at the longsword Lord Mormont had bestowed upon him and wondering where to go, wondering what to do when there was a noise outside.

His sense of purpose was _there_ , waiting past the gates of Castle Black to reignite the deepest recesses where his passions lay; where his long-held desires lay.

Sansa had come to wake him up.

The only time he felt human--

It was all her. Her bold blue eyes that demanded. Demanded he rose again. Demanded he cut out his heart and hand it to her. And he did.

He did.

  
  


Now he lays awake, eyes on the ever-encompassing darkness surrounding his chambers and he can't sleep. He can't.

He won't.

Darkness invites him to dine with it and he refuses. It has a pull that speaks and it shakes in his chest. As his chest rises, he tries to breathe through the strangling lure. It almost catches him, a fist striking at his throat.

He jolts upright, a gasp on his lips. Feels like he's back there in that empty room, gasping for breath, half-dead, and half-alive.

It takes him only a second to decide and he's sweeping aside his blanket and putting his feet on the floor, climbing out of his bed.

He gave Father and Lady Catelyn’s chambers to Sansa. It was her right even if the Northmen cried out he be King in the North. It had felt exhilarating then. That they were willing to thrust their lives on the line, swearing loyalty to his name. Them-- scarce few though they were-- Northmen who had only ever loyal been to the Starks, who named him King because they judged him to be worthy of the name. Him-- him who was the Bastard of Winterfell, who was a failure of a lord commander at the Watch.

Lord Snow.

Him.

And the happiness that caught at him was complicated by guilty feelings, feelings of inadequacy. Feeling like he was betraying his sister’s right. He missed Robb with an intense pain. Yet once he had turned to see what _Sansa_ thought about it all, she had looked up at him and graced him with a happy, proud, accepting smile.

How could he deny a small, deep most part of him that desired such a thing after that? Not something as overwhelming as the title of King. But a place of honor among the Starks was all he had desired. Not a baseborn son who was a reminder of Ned Stark’s rare betrayal. Not a slight in the eyes of the Lady of Winterfell.

Catelyn Stark was no longer Lady of Winterfell, however. That was Sansa.

And he was heading toward her.

Guards lurked around the lady’s room. He'd ordered them to do so. They had asked if they should guard him as well when he slept but he hardly slept. Now they looked at him, startled by his presence at this time in the night.

“Your Grace?” asked one of them.

He raised a hand quieting any other questions coming forth from them. He glanced at the door where Sansa surely slept.

He didn't know how to explain to them why he was here.

Outside his sister’s chambers.

He didn't know himself. He gave them a look, shaking his head before he opened the door to the lady’s chambers.

They stared at him.

“Don't disturb us,” he ordered, his tone grave and kingly.

At their surprised faces, he shut the door and turned round to find Sansa lying on her bed with her eyes closed, her hair mussed, a woolen sheet covering her up to her chest and her face squished onto her pillow. It was good she was sleeping but Jon felt disappointed.

He wanted to look into her eyes and talk, however awkwardly he tended to in front of her. She made him stutter sometimes. Made his heart skip a beat. Made him so happy in his chest, in his very lungs, that he laughed with his neck back, with his whole stomach. Effortlessly.

Jon never required less effort than in smiling back at her. There was no type of courtesy he was following in that.

It surprised him as well. She had never been his favorite sister. Heck, not even his favorite sibling. He thought about meeting with Robb, Bran and Arya more often than he did her. Yet she was undeniably a part of the Starks and the Starks were home, no matter how it had stung to be set aside as a bastard many times before.

The fact remained that she was the light-- the only flame that washed away all the darkness awash him. He didn't know how he could have survived on, much less fight on, much longer.

Lords and ladies alike might turn their noses up at the once betrothed, twice wedded Lady of Winterfell who was no battle commander, neither was she a pure, gentle maiden any longer but it was at her urging that the army of the Vale had shown up. It was at her urging that Jon felt enlivened enough to battle in the field. Rickon’s death had done the rest.

Now he didn't know who he was. He wasn't a strong, smart brother. He could have saved Rickon otherwise. He wasn't a good brother either, hovering over Sansa’s sleeping frame, watching as she breathed in and out evenly, steady as a heartbeat.Watching her lips part over her breaths.

Watching her was a battle of urges. He wanted to caress her copper-- “ _kissed by fire_ ” Ygritte whispered in his ear --hair. Hold her dainty, white hand that hung at her side. Lie beside her, watch the flutter of her eyes behind her eyelids, feel her breath touch his lips.

He ached with these urges and fisted them all back like he fisted his hands.

She was so pretty. So fragile. So _strong_.

They didn't know that she was his strength now.

 _What would they think_ ? He thought as he knelt by her bed, his right hand reached over to grasp hers within his own. _If they knew that their king could only last so long as this ember within his hands burned._

His thumb brushed up and down the vein on the back of her hand lightly. She was so startling in the clarity she brought to his damned existence. So sweet to the hollow beneath his heart. So filling to the lips that rarely laughed. She brought him back to earth and he was so thankful for it.

He kissed her hand without thinking. He was past the point of reconsidering his urges. It was so easy to kiss her-- to touch her-- all he ever wanted to do was touch her.

He didn't know how long he held her hand to his face, relishing the warmth and softness and the smell of lavender on her hands, but he knew when they stirred. He looked up at tired, narrow slits of blue eyes that were watching him curiously.

“Jon,” she murmured, her eyes were small enough and her voice croaky that anyone would think she was half-asleep still, but the way she squeezed his hands suggested she wasn't all that gone. He was sorry he woke her up but it filled him with joy to see a glimpse of her sharp blue-eyed attention. “What's wrong?”

He didn't deserve her. He prayed to the Old Gods sometimes that they not take her away. He would do anything to deserve her. He just couldn't part from her.

He twisted his lips for half a second, letting her peer at part of the bitterness that swelled up within him sometimes.

“Couldn't sleep,” he admitted sheepishly, head dipped, eyes lowered.

She stared at him, blinking fast, some traces of sleep gone from her eyes. Then, she propped herself on her elbows and pulled at his hand that had been holding hers. He looked at her questioningly.

“Sleep with me, then.” She insisted, pulling again. He stood up, protests rising up in his throat. “Who knows, maybe we’ll both sleep better.” She said and he swallowed his arguments, paused and hesitated. There were so many reasons why this didn’t seem right. So many reasons why he shouldn’t. He didn’t want to delve deeper into the feelings she sprouted within him with just a touch or a look. So he stood there for a minute, noted her raised eyebrows and then slid in beside her, just like he desired.

She slept right away, only shifting so her head lay close to his, nuzzling his collar bone with closed eyes and contorted brows that indicated a sort-of relaxation with her surroundings, with him. He watched her as she stopped shifting, as her mouth parted slowly and even breaths stirred the hairs on his chin.

He watched her for a long time before sleep caught him too and he couldn't remember dreams, much less the darkness beneath his rib cage.

  
  
  


She was reluctant to let him go.

She stood before him, in an empty hallway of the castle, her hands twisting nervously. They had been walking when he’d told her his plan for the battle in the north. She’d known he would go with his Northmen. He was like Robb in that matter. Stubborn as a mule and honorable to a fault.

She couldn't really stop him yet she’d hoped he would.

“Sansa?” Jon questioned gently.

She lifted her eyes, fiddling with her fingers still as she found herself peering into his soft, gray eyes. She knew he wouldn't listen to her if she told him not to go. She tried to think of any reason why he shouldn’t but none of them were enough, she knew. Jon wouldn't listen. Jon was so stupid and cruel to leave her like this.

He was the only one left to her and yet--

She inhaled a breath. No. She had to stop being so needy.

She looked at her feet and made a hopeless query. “What if I were to go with you, to the north?”

Jon looked puzzled for a moment, all soft furrows of worry and thought before his expression solidified. “No, Sansa. You know why you have to stay here.”

“I know,” _She knew_. “I just--” she broke off. She looked away.

“I’ll be okay,” Jon told her. Her lips curled in a wry line at his words without her intention. It was reflexive, the way it came to her mouth. The thought. The idea that he would be fine.

Jon had died once, she remembered. He survived because the Red Woman was with him but where was she now? Exiled. If he were to get stabbed now, he wouldn't return.

She’d be left alone with the cold Winterfell walls to surround her, alone with her nightmares, alone with strangers she didn't trust (she would never be able to trust anyone except family now, she feared) guarding her and serving her-- and the vain hope that Bran and Arya were alive somewhere, soon to return back home. How could she cope?

“You're worried over nothing,” Jon said, an exasperated look on his face, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I only need to see if the rumors are true.”

“Of White Walkers.” she blurted out. “Of dead men with blue eyes walking on this side.” she looked at him with pleading eyes. “Jon, I believe you are a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. I've seen it. But don't tell me you’ll hold your own against those things.”

He frowned, eyes turned downward. “I've faced them before. I'll face them again, with the strongest army in the North at my back.” He sounded just like her father when he said this-- all brave, foolish and warily determined-- and Father had died. So what would be left of Jon? Her nerves strained to think on it.

“But I think it's too soon to assume they're here. I wager a few wights got through the cracks in the wall, that's all.” Jon looked off into the distance. “It’ll be good training for them, facing wights and knowing what to do against them. Will come in handy for the big battle, that’s for sure.”

She winced. When Jon made sense and she was the one holding onto her sentimentality as the only reason, there was something to be said. It didn’t matter that she was afraid of losing someone important once again. In wars like these, you had to risk it all. Even the thing you loved most.

Sansa had to brave the storm alone. So did Jon. Yet the pack would stay together.

At the end of the day, the pack would stay together. She had to hold onto that.

She would.

“Just…” she inhaled the cold into her lungs, sharp and sudden. Gave Jon a demanding look and said: “Just come back to me,”

Jon’s lips flickered into a tender smile that was just for her. “Yes, my lady,” He said in that deliberate, knightly tone of his.

She shook her head and looked away, her eyelashes fluttering against the tears that stung the back of her eyes. “Then, you may go.”

Jon placed his hand over her elbow and squeezed, a silent gesture of comfort and reassurance that was fleeting in how it warmed her up for a minute and then left her cold the couple minutes after he walked away.

She didn’t pray anymore. She knew neither the Old Gods nor the New listened. Yet for a moment, she looked up at the bleached out sky and the breeze-ridden snow in the air and murmured a small wish without thinking.

Only a shivering moment later, she _felt_ an answering murmur of “I will,” as if from a rustle of branches and leaves, but there were no leaves left. Only cold and harsh winter’s approach.


End file.
